Cradle (46 page)

The mako began to be agitated. Greta started increasing the tempo, the shark responding
by whipping the water back and forth with its tail. Suddenly Greta disappeared up
the stairs. Carol thought she noticed a faraway look in her eyes when Greta zoomed
by her. Carol looked at Homer for an explanation. ‘Come down here closer,’ he gestured
to Carol. ‘You don’t want to miss this. Greta cares for the rabbits herself. And Timmy
always puts on a grand show.’

Carol wasn’t exactly sure what Homer was talking about. But she was enjoying the lovely
aquarium. It contained crystal-clear sea water, obviously filtered and recycled regularly.
Carol noticed several species of sponges and coral, as well as urchin and anemone.
Someone had gone to great trouble and expense to re-create the conditions in the reefs
just offshore from Key West.

Suddenly a beheaded white rabbit impaled on a long vertical staff, the blood still
spurting from its arteries, appeared in the aquarium just opposite where Carol and
Homer were standing. It was over in an instant. Driven to immediate frenzy by the
blood in the water, the mako attacked, its teeth ripping half the rabbit off the staff
with the first bite. The second swoop captured the rest of the rabbit and snapped
the rod as well. Carol barely had time to recoil and turn her head. When she jumped
back, she spilled wine all over her blouse.

Trying to appear calm, she reached in her purse for a tissue to wipe her blouse. She
said nothing. She had had a perfect view of the shark’s attack and could still feel
the adrenaline imbalance that the fright had produced.
Great way to start a dinner party
, she thought.
Why haven’t I ever thought of it. Dawson, these people are weird
.

Homer was still excited. ‘Wasn’t that spectacular? Such raw, savage power in those
jaws. Driven by pure instinct. I never get tired of it.’

Carol followed him up the stairs. ‘Good show, Greta,’ she heard Homer say when they
walked out of the cottage. ‘It was right in front of us. Two bites. Wham, wham, and
the rabbit was gone.’

‘I know,’ said Greta. She was holding a diving mask. What was left of the staff was
on the ground beside her. ‘I could see from up here.’ Greta was staring at Carol,
obviously trying to discover her reaction. Carol averted her eyes. She was not going
to give Greta the satisfaction of knowing she had found it repulsive.

‘Greta has the whole thing down to split-second timing,’ Homer continued as they walked
back through the gardens to the house. ‘She prepares the live rabbit on the chopping
block an hour early. Then, when Timmy is ready, she…’

Carol tuned his gruesome story out of her mind.
I don’t want to hear this
, she thought.
She glanced at her watch. Ten minutes after nine. Come on guys. Be swift. I’m not
certain I can stand these people for another hour
.

Nick and Troy swam silently along the shoreline in the moonlight. They had carefully
rehearsed the plan. No additional light until they were in the cove beside Homer’s
property and at least ten feet under water. Troy would lead, searching for alarm systems
he could disable with the tools stuffed in the pockets of his wet suit. He would also
keep a lookout for the infamous robot sentries. Nick would follow with the buoyancy
bags they would use to carry the gold.

They had walked along the beach from the Pelican Resort car park, wearing their heavy
diving suits as well as the backpacks, until they were only about a hundred yards
from the thick fence that marked Homer’s property. Then they had set down the packs
containing their clothes and eased into the water. During the walk Troy had had several
problems with his tools, and a decision to reduce his arsenal of gadgets had delayed
their arrival at the embarkation point by five minutes. Just before they went into
the water, Nick had given an uncharacteristic squeal of excitement and grabbed Troy
by the shoulders. ‘I hope that fucking gold is there,’ he had said. ‘I cannot wait
to see their faces after we steal it.’

It was time to submerge. Holding hands in the darkness, Nick and Troy dropped about
five feet under the water. They stopped, equalized the pressure in their heads, and
repeated the procedure. When they were down about ten feet, Troy turned on the searchlight.
They quickly worked out their directions and headed around the corner, deeper into
the cove adjoining Homer’s estate.

Troy was in the lead. He had no trouble finding the entrance to the natural tunnel
that led to the subterranean cave. As they had planned, Nick waited outside the tunnel
while Troy went inside to look for alarms. The rock cliffs closed over his head. The
watery entryway was about five feet across and four feet high. Troy immediately found
a metal box affixed to the left wall, where it was partially hidden from view. When
he examined the box, he discovered that it was emitting two laser beams separated
by about three feet.

On the other side of the natural tunnel were the receiving plates for the beams as
well as the alarm electronics. Troy swam over carefully, pulled out his screwdriver,
and dismantled the housing. The system was very simple. Failure of either plate to
receive a beam would trigger the opening of a relay. When both relays were open, current
could flow to the alarm. Thus an object had to be large enough to break both beams
simultaneously to set off an alarm. Troy smiled to himself as he validated the operating
principle by passing his hand in front of one of the beams. Then he jerryrigged one
of the relays permanently closed. Satisfied with his work, he swam back and forth
in the tunnel, breaking both beams at the same time, reassuring himself that he had
rendered the alarm system ineffective.

He swam back out to meet Nick and gave him the thumbs-up sign. The two men passed
through the fifty yards of natural tunnel into the subterranean cave. Where the narrow
passageway widened, Troy again gestured to Nick to remain behind while he, Troy, went
into the cave to check for boobytraps. Nick let his feet fall to the bottom of the
tunnel and switched on his own small flashlight. He was in a perfect place for an
ambush. The tunnel was so small here that there was virtually no manoeuvring room.
He wondered what an underwater sentry would look like.
What a place to die
, he thought suddenly. Fear swept over him as he turned off his flashlight and looked
down at his illuminated diver’s watch. He watched the glowing second hand sweeping
around the face. He tried to calm himself. It had been three minutes since Troy had
left.
Why is he taking so long?
he asked himself.
He must have found something
. Another minute passed. Then another. Nick was having a hard time quelling the onset
of panic.
What do I do if he doesn’t return?

Just as Nick was about to swim into the cave on his own, he caught sight of Troy’s
searchlight coming toward him. Troy waved and Nick followed. Within thirty seconds
they were in the shallow part of the cave, where the water was only about four feet
deep. The two men stood up with their flippers lodged against the rocks to protect
themselves from falling in the intermittent tidal surges.

Nick pulled his regulator out of his mouth and flipped his mask back on his head.
Before he could speak, Troy put a finger against Nick’s lips. ‘Speak very softly,’
Troy’s whisper was barely audible. ‘The place could be alarmed for sound as well.’

There was no light in the cave except Troy’s searchlight. However, over their heads,
in the highest corners of the rock ceiling, Troy pointed out two separate banks of
fluorescent lighting. The cave itself was an irregular oval, about thirty yards in
its longest dimension and maybe fifteen yards across at its widest point. The ceiling
was only about three feet above the water near the entrance to the tunnel out to the
ocean, but it was twenty feet high in the corner where they were standing in the shallow
water.

‘Well, Professor,’ Troy continued whispering, ‘I have good news and bad news. The
bad news is that there is no treasure here in this cave. The good news is that there
are two other tunnels, both manmade, that lead away from this place and go under Captain
Homer’s property.’ He paused for a moment and watched his partner. ‘Shall we go for
it?’

Nick looked at his watch. It was nine-twenty already. He nodded. ‘The bastard spent
a lot of money down here. They must have stolen more than I figured.’ Nick adjusted
his diving equipment.

‘We’ll start with the tunnel on the left. As before, I’ll lead to look for trouble.’
Troy cast his searchlight around on the ceiling. ‘This is a strange place. But beautiful.
It looks like another planet, doesn’t it?’

Nick pulled his mask back over his face and slipped the regulator in his mouth. He
flopped backward into the sea water. Troy followed and, once under the surface, showed
Nick the way to the first manmade tunnel. This tunnel was on the other side of the
cave, about twelve feet below the water at its lowest point. It was made of normal
circular sewer pipe. The diameter of the pipe was about five feet, making the tunnel
approximately the same size as the natural passageway between the ocean and the cave.
Troy entered the tunnel gingerly. He swam back and forth from side to side, examining
one wall for a few yards and then going across to the other. He almost missed the
long, slender alarm box. It was embedded in the ceiling at a junction between two
sections of sewer pipe and Troy just happened to look up before he triggered the alarm.

This system worked on a different principle. A camera or other optical device in the
box on the ceiling took repeated images of a square foot of the tunnel bottom that
was backlit by an illuminated square cleverly concealed below the normal concrete
floor. Apparently some kind of data comparison algorithm in the alarm processor contained
logic by which the consecutive pictures could be assessed, in terms of threat, and
an alarm triggered if necessary. It was the most complicated device of its kind that
Troy had ever seen and he quickly recognized the similarities between this system
and the ocean telescope that had been onboard the
Florida Queen. That means MOI designed and developed it
, he thought to himself.
So I’d best be careful. I bet the algorithm is set so that disturbances to the camera
trigger the alarm as well
.

Nick had swum over to the side of the tunnel, out of the way, and was watching Troy
try to open up the alarm box without jiggling the optical instrument. To accommodate
the almost two-inch width of the box, there was a gap of that size everywhere around
the circle connecting the two sequential sections of pipe. Throughout the rest of
the tunnel, all adjoining sections were cemented together. Here the passage-way was
discontinuous.

Curious
, thought Nick. He idly shone his small flashlight into the blackness in the gap beside
him, expecting to see nothing but a wall of rock.
What in the world is that?
he wondered, as his light fell upon some metal object that looked like a large grating.
The grating was resting upon an old piece of railroad track. Nick looked more carefully.
He could make out a gear box and some pulleys, but he had no idea how all these mechanical
devices fitted together.

Meanwhile Troy had managed to remove the housing from the alarm box without disturbing
the camera and was busy trying to understand the inner workings of the system.
Whew
, he thought.
This is much too complicated to figure out in five minutes. If I can just isolate
the alarm, that should be enough
. It was difficult work under the water. But Troy was clever and the electronics were
packaged in a logical fashion. He was able to find the alarm and disable it. Afterwards
Troy lingered for several seconds trying to determine the purpose of the other circuits
connected to the alarm subassembly.

Nick had intended to show Troy what he had found in the gap; however, as he watched
his friend struggling with the complex circuitry of the alarm box, he became again
worried about the passage of time. It was now almost a quarter to ten. He caught Troy’s
eye and pointed at his watch. Troy reluctantly abandoned his investigation of the
alarm and proceeded down the tunnel.

Thirty yards farther the tunnel passed what looked like a door to a submarine on their
left. Both Troy and Nick tried pulling on the handle of the large and very heavy round
door but nothing happened. With gestures Troy told Nick to continue trying to open
the door while he swam on down the tunnel.

The gold bars and other objects that remained from the
Santa Rosa
treasure were sitting in the tunnel another thirty yards beyond the round door. The
passageway itself came to an abrupt halt against a rock wall. In front of the wall
was an array of gold and silver objects, stacked to an average depth of a foot or
so across the width of the tunnel. The treasure was not hidden in any way; it was
simply scattered in random piles on the concrete floor at the end of the tunnel. Troy
was ecstatic.
There’s plenty here
, he thought.
Enough for the aliens. Enough for Nick. Maybe even some left over for Carol and me
.

He swam back to find Nick. Nick was absolutely exultant when he saw the unmistakable
smile on Troy’s face. He raced around his friend to the end of the tunnel. When Nick
first reached the treasure, he spent a minute or two swimming around, picking up each
object that was different and dropping it back into the piles on the floor.

Holy shit
, Nick said gleefully to himself as he and Troy started putting gold bars into the
buoyancy bags.
I was right for once. There must be over a hundred pounds in bars alone
. They had agreed before the dive just to bring out the bars, provided there were
enough. The bars were the only objects they could be certain were pure gold.
Even if we take fifty-eight to Troy’s friends, that might leave fifty or so for us
. He did a quick mental calculation.
That could be over three hundred thousand dollars apiece. Whoopee
!